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Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

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Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#211

Post by lisper »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #146

I don't really have much of an opinion on how twitter should approach world leaders. I'm more interested in the approach of world leaders to twitter. As far as I'm concerned, people receiving salaries from the taxpayer shouldn't be spending their time writing free copy for twitter. They should be communicating with the public via government operated websites, or press conferences covered by multiple media organizatio…

The problem is that all leaders have an inherent conflict of interest between the following two goals:

1. Doing the job

2. Maintaining power

The problem is, again, two-fold:

1. The things you need to do to serve the first goal are often different from the things you need to do to serve the second, and

2. You must achieve the second goal in order to even attempt to achieve the first.

That's the fundamental problem. It has nothing to do with Twitter per se. It's an inherent feature of all large-scale societal interactions.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#213

Post by kaiju0 »

rubyist5eva wrote: post #189
foobiter wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

marjorie taylor green requires more detail than simply “a republican congresswoman” - she’s blamed forest fires on jewish space lasers, among other racist, homophobic, and transphobic conspiracy theories

She is still an elected member of congress, and from what I hear - a rather popular one, regardless of her "tinfoil hatery". Opposition parties should _never_ have the power to just expel people they don't like from the opposing side. I'm sure it's purely coincidence she is locked from her twitter account on the same day that congress will be voting on a resolution on whether or not to expel her.

Shes has only been removed from twitter for spreading false information. Her free speech has not been violated.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#214

Post by sneak »

seany wrote: post #206

Seems like not censoring anyone regardless of who they are is the best option.

It's the best option for the world, but not the best option for Twitter Inc, sadly.

They aren't the same thing. Twitter is a for-profit company and has a legal obligation to not build in revenue footguns, even if it would be better for society and the world for them to stop censoring people. :(

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#215

Post by kaiju0 »

jtdev wrote: post #80

Simple answer to this entire issue: If it’s not illegal, don’t censor or moderate it in any way. Social media companies like Twitter realize that this is the most reasonable approach, but it effectively removes their ability to manipulate... so of course they continue to censor and moderate in a biased fashion.

Here is a leader calling for Jewish genocide

https://nypost.com/2020/07/30/twitter-execs-refused-request-...

It must be moderated.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#216

Post by refenestrator »

vorpalhex wrote: post #113
refenestrator wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was struck by the Chinese embassy that got banned a couple months ago. They said that their fight against radical islam is good for uighur women.. which is propaganda but also the exact same propaganda that western interventionists use all the time. One is ok, the other is not.

Well it probably helps only one of those is sterilizing muslim women while keeping them in detention camps? Fighting a multi-national ground war against ISIS is a bit different then genocide against your own citizens.

Like I said, the 'good guys' propaganda is good :)

If you track down some of the claims you're making, you'll find that most of them originate with this guy Adrian Zenz who is literally a paid propagandist for his job at the "Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation".

Not that anybody who claims to be 'liberating the muslims' is ever up to any good. But some more objective measures might be things like, what is the body count associated with either nation, or has the population been going up or down in a given region.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#217

Post by sneak »

danaliv wrote: post #114
exabrial wrote: post #23

Be a free speech platform, how about that?

How about we all admit that this is a simplistic position that flies in the face of centuries of case law trying to work out exactly what "free speech" means and how it squares with people's other fundamental, inalienable rights, because in real life it's not, in fact, obvious?

The boundaries of legal speech are pretty well sorted out.

Web and email hosting companies don't have an issue figuring it out. Twitter shouldn't either.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#218

Post by ars »

jfengel wrote: post #184
ars wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that ever since banning Trump they have less usage on the site. So they need those "exciting" world leaders. Telling Twitter to ban all world leaders is the opposite of what they want. They want to be able to have all those people on there, while not being blamed for leaving "bad" content up.

They need those exciting leaders if their sole goal is to maximize their profits. If they also want to have a world to spend their profits in, it's worth considering that some tactics may be different. This is unusual territory, since it's not all that common for one company to be so closely involved with what could literally have been violent insurrection, even leading to outright war. It didn't, but it came far clo…

The capitol hill thing was planned on Facebook, not Twitter (or Gab for that matter).

Twitter has an inflated sense of its own importance.

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#219

Post by BoorishBears »

dv_dt wrote: post #202
BoorishBears wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What feedback? Does anyone think Donald Trump ever actually read those one-line zingers random celebs would reply to his tweets with? Do people think some dictator is going to ignore the people they're oppressing but listen to @xx69destroyerman calling them out?

Not all opportunities are exercised - but especially on HN I would think we should realize that it's significant that they exist. But your comment also brings up a possible secondary benefit: the benefit of the people to see and possibly get in contact with other real people (real for the most part hopefully), as they criticize world figures. This is something that doesn't exist in other media outlets or exists only…

No idea what that first paragraph is trying to say.

And people can contact other people and criticize world leaders whether or not those leaders spend countless hours a day tweeting.

Twitter is quite possibly one of the worst places for that anyways for multiple reasons (established fake account infrastructure distorting conversations, poor layout for async discussion between many people, etc)

Re: Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders

#220

Post by TrispusAttucks »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #141
chmod775 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But events 2 months ago rendered that stance untenable. Now that's just not true. What trump did was a relatively minor infraction compared to what is happening in some countries around the world. Like it just doesn't come close on any scale. The realization here is that people at twitter have an opinion on US politics, and are generally oblivious to the rest of the world. The waters they're in would've been way le…

It was relatively minor, but it was a lot more relevant to Twitter because it happened in the country where most of their employees and servers are located. What they realized, I think, is that their prior stance of "we'll never ban a world leader" was naive; they hadn't fully thought through the potential negative effects, because the full spectrum of consequences that a government leader's speech can have was outsi…

No. What's naive is to think that the United States President being banned wasn't political. This is an admission of that and an attempt to save face.
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